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\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\n By ISABELLA O’MALLEY<\/b> with AP<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
\n Published on
\n 11\/09\/2025 – 10:29 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Fifty-five heatwaves over the past quarter-century would not have happened without human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Planet-warming emissions from 180 major cement, oil and gas producers contributed significantly to all of the heat events considered in the study, which was published in the journal Nature<\/strong><\/a> and examined a set of 213 heatwaves from 2000 to 2023.<\/p>\n The polluters examined in the study include publicly traded and state-owned companies, as well as several countries where fossil fuel production data was available at the national level.<\/p>\n Collectively, these producers are responsible for 57 per cent of all the carbon dioxide that was emitted from 1850 to 2023, the study found.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just shows that it\u2019s not that many actors \u2026 who are responsible for a very strong fraction of all emissions,\u201d said Sonia Seneviratne, a climate professor at the Swiss university ETH Zurich who was one of the study’s contributors.<\/p>\n The set of heatwaves in the study came from the EM-DAT International Disaster Database, which the researchers described as the most widely used global disaster repository. The Nature study examined all of the heatwaves in the database from 2000 to 2023, except for a few that weren\u2019t suitable for their analysis.<\/p>\n Global warming made all 213 of the heatwaves examined more likely, the study found. Out of those, 55 were 10,000 times more likely to have happened than they would have been before industrialisation began accelerating in the 1800s. The calculation is equivalent to saying those 55 heatwaves \u201cwould have been virtually impossible\u201d without human-caused climate change, the authors wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of these heatwaves had very strong consequences,\u201d said Seneviratne. <\/p>\n She said the series of heatwaves<\/strong><\/a> that struck Europe in 2022, which was linked to tens of thousands of deaths, sticks out in her mind as one of the events with particularly grave consequences.<\/p>\n Scientists calculate how carbon emitters influence heatwaves<\/p>\n Climate scientists can use complex computer programs and historic weather data to calculate the connection between extreme weather events and the planet-warming pollutants humans emit. <\/p>\n Climate change attribution studies often focus on how climate change influenced a specific weather event<\/strong><\/a>, but the scientists say this new Nature study is unique because it focuses on the extent to which cement and fossil fuel producers have contributed to heatwaves.<\/p>\n